No. 4, 2009

The Ukhta State Technical University is the Republic of Komi’s leader in higher education for petroleum engineers

For the last 52 years, the the Ukhta State Technical University has been a source of highly trained engineers for the large oil and gas companies operating on the territory of the Republic of Komi. A considerable number of their graduates go to work for LUKOIL, helping to shape the future of the region and the nation.

Fifty years of history

The founding and development of higher technical education in Ukhta half a century ago followed an unswerving upward curve.  The history of the Ukhta State Technical University began in April 1958, when Moscow's Gubkin Institute of Petrochemicals and Natural Gas opened an educational support center in Ukhta.  Under the provisions of a law passed by the USSR Supreme Soviet on December 24, 1958, On Improving School Ties with the Life and Further Development of the National System of Public Education, a system was set up for training students through a combination of professional correspondence courses and on-the-job experience.   The Moscow Institute of Petrochemicals and Natural Gas was of immense help in creating a library of coursebooks and other materials.  The institute regularly sent highly qualified instructors to Ukhta to oversee the educational process.

The accelerated development of the oil, petrochemical, and natural gas industries in the Republic of Komi demanded that engineering personnel be trained on the spot.  The problems of training highly qualified workers were discussed in detail within both the government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Council of Ministers for the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.  As a result, the study support center became a department of the Moscow Petrochemical and Natural Gas Institute, headed by Candidate of Technical Sciences Yury Rybakov and offering extension courses in technical engineering.  Within two years, the USSR Council of Ministers has already mandated, by its order of March 21, 1967, that the RSFSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education create an industrial institute in Ukhta.  Its structure, consisting of three divisions - departments of oil and gas production, forestry, and evening and correspondence courses - was quickly decided.  Grigory Panov (1929-1988), Candidate of Technical Sciences and Associate Professor, was appointed as the institute's first dean.  He proposed a program that included

optimizing the institute's structure and expanding its material and technical base, the modernization of the institute's laboratories, and a number of other measures to make the academic process more effective.  The process of constantly raising the institute's potential can be traced back to that year.  If only six students from the extension course first graduated with engineering degrees in 1969, a total of 274 skilled workers, including 26 geologists, 36 geophysicists, 37 petroleum engineers, and 107 highly trained forestry engineers graduated in 1972.  By this time, the institute was composed of five faculties with 20 departments, in which two professors and 40 assistant professors and candidates of science were working.

In subsequent decades, the Ukhta Industrial Institute, headed by Deans Vladimir Matusevich (1975-1980) and Gennady Rassokhin (1980-1997), developed quickly by leaps and bounds.  It soon garnered well-deserved recognition and respect throughout the Republic of Komi. Special mention should be made of the new institute's contribution to the creation and development of the republic's oil and gas complex.  Important scientific research on the oil and gas potential of the Timano-Pechora oil- and gas-bearing province was supplemented by efforts on the part of the institute's instructors, and a number of innovations were proposed for the drilling of new wells and the development of oil and gas fields.

On the right path

At present, the Ukhta Industrial Institute, granted State Technical University university status is one of the largest higher educational institutions in the Republic of Komi. It is a modern, rapidly developing scientific and educational university complex.  In the last ten years, new faculties have been opened, new buildings have been constructed, and the range of specialties in which experts are trained has been greatly expanded. It now comprises eight faculties and 32 departments; three branches: in Vorkuta, Usinsk, and Syktyvkar; an institute for the raising of professional qualifications; and an institute of physical culture and sport.  The institute's campus has since 1991 been home to a technical lyceum, and since 1993 to the Rostok School, where students who have gone through a competitive selection process may take intensive courses in mathematics, physics, information science, computer technology, and foreign languages.

Today, the number of students at all levels of education taught by the university stands at around 7,000; if we include students at the university's branches, the figure comes to more than 8,000.  The university conducts training programs that offer specialist, bachelor's, and master's degrees in 30 areas of expertise and their associated fields; graduate students may choose from among 18 areas of expertise.  If one includes graduate programs, programs for raising professional qualifications, and programs for working professionals and others, a total of 241 different programs are offered.

The university's campus includes eight laboratory and lecture buildings with a total area of 78,437 m². The laboratory division is equipped with state-of-the-art computers.  A closed circuit television system is often used to teach.  Full Internet access is provided by a satellite communications channel.  The university's library holds an impressive collection of scientific literature and works of fiction.  The university publishes the house newspapers University News, Alma Mater, and FIT-Site, along with the magazines Concept and Planet University.

A total of 389 instructors teach at the university. They include 49 professors and doctors of science, and 200 assistant professors and candidates of science.  Among these are 31 academicians and four corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, plus four Honored Workers of the Republic of Komi.

Professor Nikolay Tskhadaya, Dean of the University, emphasizes that its main product is the knowledge, know-how, and skills of its graduates.  This is education in the broadest sense - which, along with professional competency implies development of all the basic abilities of a young specialist, be they intellectual, creative, moral, or physical.

Innovation is key

In the words of Dean Tskhadaya, the university's current strategy is based on three main points: Quality, Innovation, and Comprehensiveness.  Innovation is currently drawing a great deal of attention in Russia, and Tskhadaya believes that the innovative approach is both the result of and the main factor in realizing the fundamental principle of a university education, which lies in the unity of study, training, science, and works.  The entire professorial and teaching staff therefore does its best to ensure that the knowledge, know-how, and skills of the university's graduates find genuine expression in actual work.

An enormous segment of the university has now been given over to scientific research.  Their main lines of scientific work are focused on the development of fundamental research as a foundation for creating and perfecting usable new science-intensive products, raw and finished materials, and hardware and technologies, in cooperation with scientific, planning, and design and testing industries, organizations, and concerns. They are aimed at further study of the Timano-Pechora province, and of northeastern European Russia as a whole, and at solving the industrial and socioeconomic problems of the region's development.  The university holds 40 Russian Federation patents in the area of oil and gas.

The heart of the Ukhta university complex is its schools of scientific education, which put their own science-intensive products to work through the university's network of centers for innovation. 

There are already 11 innovative academic structures operating on today's university campus.  These include the Oil and Gas Scientific Research and Design Institute; the Regional Centre for Industrial Safety Expert Appraisal at Oil and Gas Industry Facilities; the Regional Research and Education Center for Innovation; the Regional Center for Innovative Energy Conservation; the Centre for Intellectual Property, Patent, and Licensing Activity; the Academic Innovation Centre for High-Viscosity Oils and Bitumens; the Centre for Sociological Studies;  the Scientific and Technical Centre for Well-Drilling Hardware and Technique;  the Scientific Research and Design Centre for Oil and Gas Industry Facilities; the Centre for Occupational Safety Studies; and the Centre for Quality Control of Education.

In the past two years, the Ukhta State Technical University has won several competitions for the funding of scientific research with money from the federal budget under the RF Ministry of Education and Science's target program on eight promising topics.

In orbits of collaboration

The university's work inside the republic becomes more intensive and varied with each passing year, while its nationwide and international ties expand and grow stronger as well. The Ukhta State Technical University is now actively developing scientific, manufacturing, academic, and methodological ties with a wide variety of Russian and foreign organizations and institutions.

Nevertheless, the most important direction in this area is the Ukhta State Technical University's collaboration with Russian companies operating in the Republic of Komi. LUKOIL, a leader in Russia's oil and gas complex, holds a key position here.  This is no accident, since the Company considers working with young specialists to be an item of special interest, since one-quarter of its workers are young people under the age of 30.

In 1999, a special ceremony was held to commemorate the signing of an agreement for collaboration between LUKOIL and the Ukhta State Technical University.  This was followed by the signing of a similar agreement between the university and LUKOIL subsidiaries LUKOIL-PechorNIPIneft, LUKOIL-Komi, and LUKOIL-Ukhtaneftepererabotka.  This was a very important step: not only did it put financial aid on a firm footing, it also determined the lines of permanent scientific ties, established the conditions for on-the-job practice and industry training,  solved the problems of graduate employment and social support for students, and so on.

In the words if Dean Tskhadaya, collaboration with LUKOIL is a very important aspect of the university's work, and it has clearly decided to pursue the development of such beneficial ties.

LUKOIL is actively helping to develop the university's campus and facilities, and to reequip and upgrade the different departments and their laboratories with up-to-date instruments and equipment.  In October 2002, a LUKOIL-funded recreation center was opened at the university.  A bit later, the Company gave the university a model drilling rig that was used to equip the A.P. Yakimov Memorial Auditorium.  A LUKOIL-sponsored laboratory was subsequently opened in the Department for the Development and Exploitation of Oil and Gas Fields, along with a computerized auditorium in the Department of Geophysics. 

LUKOIL-Ukhtaneftepererabotka commissioned the Department of Mineralogy, Geochemistry, and Geology to compile a 1:25,000 ecological and geochemical map of the company's holdings and to perform an ecological analysis of its environmental protection zone.

Under the terms of the agreement, LUKOIL's top-flight specialists are in turn regularly employed to hold academic sessions with students, to fill positions of leadership, to conduct reviews, to consult on senior projects, and to serve on State Attestation Commissions.

Over the years of collaboration, the number of senior projects commissioned by different LUKOIL subsidiaries has grown.  There were more than 40 such projects during the past academic year, and more than 176 students received undergraduate and on-the-job training at LUKOIL concerns. 

Dozens of the university's students regularly take part in the young specialist conferences held by LUKOIL-Komi.  LUKOIL-funded stipends are a good means of support for the best students.  During the past academic year, for example, 18 students received such stipends, while seven instructors were given LUKOIL grants.

During his visit to Ukhta on September 4, 2009, LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov summed up the results from the collaboration between the Company and the university in a speech to the students and teaching staff.  He noted in particular that the university was essentially an academic proving ground that trained highly qualified young specialists for the Company, which has invested heavily in the development of the Timano-Pechora oil- and gas-bearing province.  The President of LUKOIL called the university an important center of scientific thought and research efforts in the area of oil and gas production that was carrying on the great traditions of the nation's school of engineering, while its graduates were the Company's personnel reserve.  He especially emphasized that a good foundation for developing a beneficial long-term partnership had already been lain over the last ten years. Dean Tskhadaya in turn stressed that it was with LUKOIL that the university associates the prospects for developing one of its high-priority educational projects, the Program for Training Personnel to Develop Fields of High-Viscosity Oils and Bitumens.  

In another of his speeches, LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov described the foundation of the strategic partnership between the university and the Company in this way: "We should remember that the main competitive advantage in today's world is the possession not of cheap resources but of intellectual and scientific and technical potential.  Maintaining and developing these is the key to prosperity in the 21st century."